I think Justin Bieber hates us

Suz and I had some beers and tried out Chatroulette for the first time last night.

In the midst of guys' junk, 14-year-olds, hairy shirtless guys and Europeans, there's also JUSTIN BIEBER.




Aside from the fact that I feel creepy for knowing who he is (god, we're old), it was a welcome change from the pervy-pervs on there. So thanks, Justin, for not flashing your dong.

Oh, and then we talked to a bird.

Annoying wife tendency?

Last night, Dave and I went out to Wicker Park for dinner with his buddy from high school. I'd never met the guy before, but I figured everything would be friendly enough, we'd have some laughs and that would be that. I imagined this obligatory wife-meeting evening would end pleasantly with me saying, "Well, it was nice to meet you," with undertones of, "We probably won't be seeing too much of each other since you're my husband's friend and I force him to hang out with my friends way more than we hang out with his."

Instead, dinner turned into drinks at Cans and drinks turned into a late night where we stumbled home at 3am and I couldn't stop gushing about the guy.

He was cute, hilarious, genuine, kind, laid-back, smart, fun and generous. He's got a good job, a stable personal life and managed to strike a great balance between listening and talking. He doesn't seem to have any crazy baggage or creepy-guy tendencies, as evidenced by the fact that he didn't leer at women at Cans or turn into a New Haircut when drunk.

So, when Dave's friend left to use the bathroom at one point, I immediately turned to Dave and said, "I love him. Who could we set him up with?"

"Stop it," Dave said, rolling his eyes.

"No! Come on! He would be great for someone."

"Okay, you're doing that really annoying thing that married couples do to their single friends and you've gotta chill out."


Oh my God, am I THAT WIFE?

I was just so excited to see one of Dave's friends who I'd happily introduce to my girlfriends without spouting off disclaimers or warnings. Is it really fair to hide him from them? I mean, what's the harm in all of us going out and seeing if he has a connection with someone I know?

None, right?

Right, which is why I have decided we will be calling this guy to hang out when Audrey comes in town in March. He already knows her and is already a fan! :-) The whole Cleveland-Chicago thing kinda puts a damper on future date nights they'd have, but they could have a good time for a weekend at least.

Aaand I'm starting to think that my last statement might make me more of a pimp than an annoying wife, which, frankly, isn't much better...

Sigh. Good Intention Fail.

Twits

I'm in a weird mood right now, so I figured I'd whine about some of the twits on Twitter. These are the people I simply don't have the patience for. I'm not pointing to anyone specific; actually it's more of a categorization. So, even though this has been done before by others, here's my list of Twitterers to avoid.


The mundane
You ate another turkey sandwich for lunch again, huh? Oh, you took the mayo off this time? It's because you RAN OUT of mayo?! Good god, man, this is getting intense! ...Or it's getting really, really boring. I can never remember which. To save myself the trouble of sorting through these thoughts, I'm just going to stop following you. Problem solved.

The oversharer
Sometimes people get just too personal on Twitter. We're talking bodily fluids or drunken daily parenting fails. Sometimes is fine, but when we're constantly hearing about your life's very intimate details, it feels like you totally thrust our relationship to a whole new level without seeing if I was comfortable first. I wasn't. And the worst part about the oversharer is that after he puts it all out there like that, he'll actually get mad when someone responds. "WTF, mind your own business and keep those thoughts to yourself!" You first.

The drama queen
The drama queen will fly off the handle about something minor and will MAKE SURE TWITTER KNOWS IT EVERY SINGLE TIME. There's a heavy use of CAPS lock, exclamation points, "omg" references, etc. Sometimes the drama queen puts herself into situations where it's obviously going to end badly, and then she bitches or whines when it actually does. It's draining and exhausting to keep up with this type, since every tweet is pretty over the top.

The self promoter
This person focuses solely on the shameless plugging of all sorts of blogs, articles and projects that he/she is working on without giving two shits about what anyone else is doing. I'm not saying it's unacceptable to point to your own stuff (I mean, I do it, so clearly it can't be wrong), but when that's alllll that's happening in those little status updates and you're constantly begging everyone to retweet, well, it gets old.

The narcisist
Similar to the self-promoter, the narcissist doesn't talk so much about what he does as much as how simply awesome/cute/funny/talented/amazing he thinks he is. The tricky thing here is that he won't always come out and directly say how awesome he is; instead, he may tell us a quick story about how someone else thinks he's awesome. Sneaky! He can be hard to spot at first for that reason, but after hearing the fortieth story about how he's practically a god, you start feeling annoyed enough to unfollow.


Okay, end rant. Just so I don't end this on a totally sour note, I've also go a quick list of people who are awesome to follow. My loves:


The hilarious
Funny = I love you. 'Nuff said.

The insider
I love following people who seem to know everything before the rest of us, who share great links and who seem to say something interesting/insightful in nearly every tweet. I have no idea how they do it.

Shaq
Shaq gets his own category. He is by far the absolute best person to follow on Twitter, so if you're not already keeping tabs on him, go follow now. You'll get gems like "Cant sleep after a loss, watchn maury povich, i am not the father schwwwww" and "Twitter me this, twitter me that. Hello to all my twittereans, This is the shaq Love u guys." Best part? He quotes himself constantly. Amazing.

Chicago bloggers get drunk

Chicago bloggers drank their faces off at Quartino and Streeters last night!

Big group. I didn't get enough pictures of everyone though because I suck.

Someone's awkward.

Second liter of wine.

Can't wait for glasses.

Hi ladies!

Cute.

It's beer pong time.

The beer pong veteran.

Another expert.

And THIS is where the night takes a hilarious yet creepy turn... Note the scary man.

Mr. Creeptastic notices our group.

Little Miss Awkward encourages him.

I IMMEDIATELY REGRET THIS DECISION.

And now you're in for a treat. Here are 10 seconds of your life that you'll never get back. You're welcome.






After that song, Mr. Creepers started making his way over to me. I think I drew attention to myself with my picture-taking and loud, creeped-out cackling. Ang immediately grabbed me, pulled me to the other side of her and glared at the man.

"Oh, no, no, no," she chided him. "MARRIED. NO."

"Happily married?" he asked me.

"YES." I said.

Ang again, "NO, NO, NO. GO."

Man persists, "Any kids?"

"One on the way -- cheers!" I said, raising my beer like a sloppy co-ed.

That did it. He left. No one likes a fetal alcohol syndrome joke.


All in all, a good night. :-)

Whatever happened to being "cruel to be kind"?

I came across a link this afternoon that made me hesitate before clicking through. It seemed a little twisted... Made me a little uncomfortable... CERTAINLY wasn't something I'd normally click...

www.operationnice.com

Operation Nice? As in "be nice to people"?

Well, I think we can all tell from my past posts that I can be a giant asshole. Short-tempered, foul-mouthed, inpatient and judgmental. That about covers it. This whole "nice" thing just seems like a pretty unsurmountable challenge.

So, I decided to try to come up with a list of nice things I've done lately:


1. When two old ladies got on the Red Line last week, I gave them my seat.
2. I replaced the toilet paper roll yesterday so Dave wouldn't have to.


Wow. I'm pathetic.

In contrast, here are the nice things people have done for me in the last week alone:


1. Three different men (different times) let me out of the elevator before them. One even said, "Ladies first," which made him sound a little dated, but it was still pretty sweet.

2. While my petite frame awkwardly struggled to carry a big Crate & Barrel box through my lobby to the elevators while blindly juggling my key fob to let me through the door, a guest visiting our building immediately asked if he could hold my package while I let myself in. And he wasn't being pervy.

3. When I bought a few things from Urban Outfitters and waited for the computer to accept my credit card, the sales girl blurted out, "Your ring is beautiful, by the way. I can't help but stare at it."

4. Even though our elevator bay serves floors 26-51 and we're all in a big damn hurry in the morning to get to work, a random girl smiled warmly at me when I halted everything to get on the elevator, instead of sighing at the fact that she had to make an extra stop during the mad rush.

5. After I wrote some copy for her, a co-worker made the extra effort to check back in with me, genuinely thank me for my work and let me know that our company gained 4 new customers in one day from my writing.

6. This weekend, my college roommate is driving five hours to my hometown just to attend one of our wedding showers. Did I mention she's doing this alone with her 14-month-old child? Amazing.

7. When I went to the pool on Sunday, all the dickheads stayed away.

8. While I was at the bar last night, a random guy was buying himself a drink next to me and saw that I was just about empty. Rather than bothering with cheesy flirting, he turned my beer bottle to see what I was drinking, ordered me another beer, paid for it, smiled and walked away. Free booze with no strings attached. The Nicest of Nice.

9. When I made a mistake (keeping that intentionally vague), my sister offered to take the blame so I wouldn't have to deal with any juvenile drama that may have resulted.

10. When I was pissed about something unrelated to that mistake, I called said sister and she actually listened, offered support and offered to step in to help alleviate the situation. WHO IS THIS PERSON? She's still a 21-year-old, slightly neurotic, slightly ADD, fairly busy individual, but she's been far less self-absorbed and pretty kick-ass lately. Don't tell her I said that. Wait, DO tell her. Let her know I'm being nice.


Okay, I'm going to stop there. Clearly, people have been nicer to me in the past week than I've never been to anyone, ever. So, maybe I'll try to tone down the attitude a bit.

Just for the next week.

During the hours of 8 and 6.

Regarding people who actually aren't begging me to curse them out.

And as long as I'm not PMS-y.

Yep, that's a good start. Baby steps!